The Australian lies to its readers about Climate Change

[Arwon]

From Crikey's Pure Poison blog

Just a pretty horrendous example of the distorting and damaging effects overly concentrated media ownership can have. News Limited's climate denialist agenda is well-known, and because of their preponderance in the Australian media landscape they can manipulate the whole debate with little chance of anyone being able to fairly correct or respond to them.

The current context is Australia is, belatedly, about to bring in a weak and probably ineffective carbon price. The Oz and other Murdoch papers have been leading the way in a frankly unhinged campaign against it, which goes well beyond reportage, into downright partisan agitation. This isn't even a tabloid, this is supposedly the flagship newspaper in Australia, the only national paper in the country, and long a leader of the political discourse.

As noted in the Open Thread by Liz A, Tim Lambert has spotted a horrendous piece of, shall we say, “quote engineering”, from The Australian’s Cut and Paste column.

Here’s the quote that they present as contradicting the Prime Minister’s quote:

Julia Gillard at a press conference on Monday: The science is telling us that climate change is real. The government accepts the science. We accept the science from our own CSIRO. We accept the science from our own weather bureau. The advice indicates that if we do not cut carbon pollution, average temperatures around Australia could increase by between 2.2 to over 5C by 2070.
…

From the true believers. Robert K. Kaufmann, Heikki Kauppi, Michael L. Mann, and James H. Stock in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday: Given the widely noted increase in the warming effects of rising greenhouse gas concentrations, it has been unclear why global surface temperatures did not rise between 1998 and 2008. Data for global surface temperature indicate little warming between 1998 and 2008. Furthermore, global surface temperature declined 0.2C between 2005 and 2008. This seeming disconnect may be one reason why the public is increasingly sceptical about anthropogenic climate change.

See, it’s not warming and we don’t know why! Trouble is, that’s not an actual paragraph from the paper. It’s been constructed by taking the first sentence of the abstract, the first and second sentence of the body of the paper and the fourth sentence of the bosy of the paper. If you look at the bits that they left out, you’ll see why. First, the rest of the abstract:

We find that this hiatus in warming coincides with a period of little increase in the sum of anthropogenic and natural forcings. Declining solar insolation as part of a normal eleven-year cycle, and a cyclical change from an El Nino to a La Nina dominate our measure of anthropogenic effects because rapid growth in short-lived sulfur emissions partially offsets rising greenhouse gas concentrations. As such, we find that recent global temperature records are consistent with the existing understanding of the relationship among global surface temperature, internal variability, and radiative forcing, which includes anthropogenic factors with well known warming and cooling effects.

Gee, their conclusion is the opposite of what Cut and Paste implied. And here’s the sentence they snipped from the body of the paper:

Although temperature increases in 2009 and 2010, the lack of a clear increase in global surface temperature between 1998 and 2008 (1), combined with rising concentrations of atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases, prompts some popular commentators (2, 3) to doubt the existing understanding of the relationship among radiative forcing, internal variability, and global surface temperature.

Dear Cut and Paste, although you can cut out mentions of temperature increases, it does not mean that temperatures have not increased.

Remember that this dishonest piece of misinformation comes from the newspaper that only a few weeks ago said:

Regular readers of this newspaper will be aware of our consistent support for a market-based price on carbon as the most efficient method of reducing emissions. But regardless of our considered position, this newspaper takes seriously our duty to provide news coverage on policy debates that covers all significant information, views and perspectives. We respect the intelligence of our readers and have confidence in their ability to make up their own minds. We operate on the understanding that you expect us to provide as much relevant information as possible, enabling you to be well-informed. It is our unwritten compact.

Unbelievable.

On the plus side, a commenter notes:

I think I get it now. I’ve applied the CP algorithm to the oz’ mission statement:

Regular readers of this newspaper will be aware of our consistent support for a market-based price on carbon as the most efficient method of reducing emissions. But regardless of our considered position, this newspaper takes seriously our duty to provide news coverage on policy debates that covers all significant information, views and perspectives. We respect the intelligence of our readers and have confidence in their ability to make up their own minds. We operate on the understanding that you expect us to provide as much relevant information as possible, enabling you to be well-informed. It is our unwritten compact.

This is what I get:

Regular readers of this newspaper will be aware of our consistent … method of reducing … the intelligence of our readers and … ability to … make up their … minds.

The perils of having very few owners of media outlets in a country. Especially with the only other newspaper company, Fairfax (The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald), on the verge of death, this bodes very ill for political discourse in Australia. The worst part is that because everyone takes their lead from the Oz and the daily papers, even coverage by everyone else ends up weirdly distorted as journos just parrot each other.

At the very least, the law should be preventing any further concentration of media ownership, but really, we should never have let it get to this point.

 

[Save_Ferris]

I believe in Global Warming, but I also believe that it is severely overestimated. However, the Australian should not be doing this in any case.

 

[Arwon]

Over the last 5 years the public in the US and Australia (and probably elsewhere) have grown less likely to "believe in climate change" (what an awful phrase, like science is a matter of belief) even as the scientific consensus grows stronger.

Gah. Passive misrepresentation from media outlets trying to present "balance" by portraying an essentially non-existent debate is bad enough, but deliberate campaigns by the likes of the Australian are even worse.

 

[timtofly]

I would say that climate change is more palatable. I have heard global warming, global cooling, global warming flip flopping so much that it makes me sick. At least now it is consistent.

 

[aw3524]

Over the last 5 years the public in the US and Australia (and probably elsewhere) have grown less likely to "believe in climate change" (what an awful phrase, like science is a matter of belief) even as the scientific consensus grows stronger.

Gah. Passive misrepresentation from media outlets trying to present "balance" by portraying an essentially non-existent debate is bad enough, but deliberate campaigns by the likes of the Australian are even worse.

Appropriate, since the field has occasionally revealed itself to not be science, but politics/religion (pick your poison) -- where the proponents are often no strangers to misrepresentation themselves. An expression of "consensus" and of "non-existent debate" is no expression of science.

 

[Tycho Brahe]

What about Australian Broadcasting Corporation? There accused of being leftist, right?

I dont know annything about the media in Australia.

 

[Arwon]

They do get accused of that, of course, but lately they've mostly just been idiots with the analytical skills of dead cats. I'm not sure if they don't have the resources to do actual journalism or whether it's because political journalists have become "he said she said" gossipmongers with the memory of goldfish.

Their big problem is they're particularly mesmerised by the false balance myth, where objectivity means giving airtime to "both sides" even when one side is entirely composed of cranks, deliberate liars, and obfuscators.

They also seem to have an awful tendency to think balance is showing what the government says and what the opposition says with no, you know, actual facts or analysis of those statements. In particular, I've lost track of the number of stories and articles which start with "the Opposition says" and are pretty much just that.

Appropriate, since the field has occasionally revealed itself to not be science, but politics/religion (pick your poison) -- where the proponents are often no strangers to misrepresentation themselves. An expression of "consensus" and of "non-existent debate" is no expression of science.

Actually, I think you'll find that climate scientists are agents of the sinister socialist one-world government conspiracy to rid the world of TV and refrigerators. For figuring this out, I expect you and I will be whisked away by the solar-powered black helicopters of the NWO very soon. Best to say goodbye to the loved ones now. Tell my mum I love her.

 

[Earthling]

Actually, I think you'll find that climate scientists are agents of the sinister socialist one-world government conspiracy to rid the world of TV and refrigerators. For figuring this out, I expect you and I will be whisked away by the solar-powered black helicopters of the NWO very soon. Best to say goodbye to the loved ones now. Tell my mum I love her.

Excellent response but not sufficiently neutral as we know those nasty scienticians to be.

Tell my wife...hello.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Scientists are often awful in handling the media. Not surprisingly, because that hardly ever used to need to be their job.

Times have changed. The media does a terrible job of carrying the scientific message, but molds that scientific message towards their own bias for sensationalism or editorial opinion. Scientists unfortunately need to step into the gap of presenting their studies to the public.

 

[pi-r8]

Sadly this is all too common. Just like cigarette companies payed to advertise that cigarettes weren't harmful, heavy polluting industries are paying to advertise that climate change isn't real.

 

[El_Machinae]

I ran into a similar issue when someone linked a Forbes opinion piece.

Yeah, it looks like the NSF "quotation" was quote-mining. Please look at it. The NSF quote from Forbes starts at the second last paragraph on pg. 24. Please read it context.

It's quote splicing, and taking things out of context. The rest of the article section is talking about the balance between GHGs and aerosols, and uncertainties in the 1974 science

The Forbes article is verifiable deception. But it doesn't matter, its intention was to do damage, to obfuscate. The magazine will suffer no consequences. The author will suffer no consequences.

The Forbes article jumped up on a number of forums and blogs when it was written, and people gleefully responded "See! It's all false!" A few days later, some of the deceptive parts were edited out

Scientists are often awful in handling the media. Not surprisingly, because that hardly ever used to need to be their job.

Times have changed. The media does a terrible job of carrying the scientific message, but molds that scientific message towards their own bias for sensationalism or editorial opinion. Scientists unfortunately need to step into the gap of presenting their studies to the public.

I listened to a very long talk the other day about scientists miscommunicating, and I really don't think it's true! They're precise in their phrasings. I watch the primary literature on a number of topics (mostly on biology and neuroscience, obviously) and nearly all of the bad interpretations occur between the media and the lay public. Arwon's find (and my Forbes find) are two examples ... the scientists were clear, and they were couching their thinking when appropriate. But the media just rewrote things to fool people.

Sometimes the lay media simplifies too much. Sometimes they simplify and then throw in a technical detail without explaining it. But, I really have to say, very often the science is clear.

aw: There IS debate in climate science. The debate is just not where people think it is. One of the huge places of debate is the cloud feedback. We keep expecting that cloud feedback should be a source of negative feedback (due to increased reflectivity), and so there're localized examinations. Unfortunately, there's little factual reason to hope that clouds will form negative feedback (the positive feedback seems to dominate so far), but there's a debate there.

What there is no debate about (for obvious reasons) is whether fossil CO2 is a greenhouse gas and whether it's a water acidifier. And the amount of warming (due to GHGs) is being debated, but the argument is regarding uncertainty in the decimal point. The potential behaviour of the icesheets are being debated (is water lubricating the slide, for example), but the disappearance if the ice is well-known. etc.

There're more than the half-dozen climate scientists that people like to scandalize. Those other scientists are publishing, too. The primary literature is constantly expanding. Unfortunately, we cannot get people to pay attention. There's debate, but not at the level people think it is.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

I listened to a very long talk the other day about scientists miscommunicating, and I really don't think it's true! They're precise in their phrasings. I watch the primary literature on a number of topics (mostly on biology and neuroscience, obviously) and nearly all of the bad interpretations occur between the media and the lay public. Arwon's find (and my Forbes find) are two examples ... the scientists were clear, and they were couching their thinking when appropriate. But the media just rewrote things to fool people.

Sometimes the lay media simplifies too much. Sometimes they simplify and then throw in a technical detail without explaining it. But, I really have to say, very often the science is clear.

That was my point actually. My point wasn't that scientists did not communicate clearly, but that they have to communicate to the media, which has often a different goal than relaying a clear truthful message to the public. The media than processes the message, often misinterpreting because of, best case, simple misunderstanding, or worst case editorial opinion or lust for sensationalism.

It's not an easy problem, because there always will be sensationalist media which will always spark more controversy and popularity and thereby takes all the limelight away from, more mundane, reasonable reporting.

 

[BasketCase]

Just a pretty horrendous example of the distorting and damaging effects overly concentrated media ownership can have.

One example. I've got thirty thousand examples of science and news media squelching the voice of climate change unbelievers.

Those thirty thousand are all right here.

 

[Tarquelne]

One example. I've got thirty thousand examples of science and news media squelching the voice of climate change unbelievers.

Those thirty thousand are all right here.

Debunked so many places. Here's just one.

And even taking the thing at face value, how is that well-known petition an example of anything being squelched?

And the subject at hand is lying. That's your cue to bring up Climate Gate.

HELLO! I shouldn't have to clue you in on the relevant Denialist BS for any given thread. Climategate addresses the issue at hand directly, media squelching is more plausible (low bar), and it's *much* fresher. Please, for ceiling cat: Try harder.

I'll let someone else deal with whatever you say about it, debunking-wise.

There should be a rota...

 

[innonimatu]

What's wrong with the newspaper quoting a portion of that paper? The conclusions themselves are the usual poorly substantiated crap from the warmists: "gee, temperatures didn't behave like we predicted, let's find some excuse, or even better, let's thrown our usual whole array of excuses in". Ex post facto excuses for the failures of their models.

The portion which the paper did quote is relevant, because in it the warmists are being forced top recognize as a fact that their predictions for temperatures came out wrong in the past few years. Yes, sure, they now go on to come up with some excuses, and the newspaper could have added that, but the newsworthiness of this paper is that the data from measurements of temperature around the Earth, which had shown a rising trend and was thus used to set off the global warming hysteria, are now causing embarrassment to its promoters, to the point where they have to admit the issue.

 

[Arwon]

"Warmists"

 

[innonimatu]

"Warmists"

Hey, they started started it, with the term "denialists".

 

[classical_hero]

What is wrong with a warmer earth?

 

[Cutlass]

What is wrong with a warmer earth?

More violent storms. More floods. The growth of deserts. The destruction of farmland. Ruined fresh water supplies. Dislocations of millions of people in low lying areas. The destruction of more property than all the earthquakes of the past century. Famine. Starvation.

 

[classical_hero]

I disagree with that, since that is not what happened during the Medieval warm period. In fact it is during times of exteme cold were most problems are cuased, such as during the ice age.